- Dec 14, 2019
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All the links in the OP are working.
Here's a 4th working one:
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- Thread starter hcdev
- Start date
Here's a 4th working one:
- Jan 29, 2019
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Sry if it's a bother, but I'm really curious about the perspective of a genuine porn game developer, who deliver finished product without any manipulative monetisation.
If you don't mind humouring me:
- What's your motive?
- To make honest money by selling satisfaction to customers?
- To craft games, collecting necessary funding / financial support along the way?
- There are also many projects are just vehicles for maximise profits, utilising manipulative business practices, but it doesn't feel apply to yours.
- How's your game's sale? Does it meet your expectation? Is it financially viable?
- I saw your game got pirated on the release day since it's on main game sale platforms, How do you feel it affected your sale?
- There's a saying that many porn games failed / studio closed because of Pirates, what's your take on it?
- Do you think "Word of Mouth" and "Good Will" is important for sales? Or only quality of the game matters?
- Cuz there're tons of games that only have either people who hate it, or "WhiteKnight (Blind Defender)"
- But I saw you spent quite some time here, also hiring people for as many localisation as you can
- Dec 14, 2019
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These are all very interesting questions and I'm happy to answer them!
1 - What's your motive?
Short answer:
it's a mix of passion and trying to make said passion profitable enough to keep doing it.
Long answer:
I have been enamored with BL games since I played Togainu no Chi back in 2012. Prior to that I had been a BL/Yaoi enthusiast for years but playing a story that's a mix of sound effects, music, images, voice acting while having the story and character depth typically associated with a novel hooked me and made me want to play more. I got Togainu no Chi by pirating it, then I purchased it 8 years later when it was officially released in English in 2020.
When in 2021 my friend pitched the story of a space pilot meeting an alien and a tentacle creature and I said "let's do it", neither my associate nor I expected we would even break even from The Symbiant's sales. It was just a passion project because we like visual novels, sci-fi, BL and tentacles.
At the same time, and prior to starting making games, I always thought that in order for BL game developers to keep making games I like, it's essential their games sell enough to sustain them and their future projects. This is why we launched a Kickstarter campaign to pay for the game's assets, voice acting and other elements that would help us shape the game with the quality we want.
And in order to make the Kickstarter as appealing as possible, I pitched several ideas to make it sell more, like adding 2 sex scenes in the demo that would otherwise not have been here (though I like to think they're still consistent with Danya and Brahve's personalities and they don't just come out of nowhere). Also, in order to futher encourage players to back us, we created a "path of least resistance" in which at the end of the demo you get enticing images from the rest of the game and then a link to back us on Kickstarter, then Patreon when the KS campaign ended, then the Steam page so they could wishlist the game and hopefully buy it later. All these things, just so there would be as little steps as possible needed for a player to support us should they choose to.
I have seen many, many indie devs pour their heart and thousands of dollars into passion projects, only for them to not even break a thousand dollars while some het porn games featured on F95 can break 10K of sales within their first month with half the effort.
As such, I'm not exactly sure we are free of manipulative monetisation, for these are tried and true strategies used by some bigger companies to keep their players hooked and encourage them to spend.
2 - How's your game's sale? Does it meet your expectation? Is it financially viable?
Short answer:
The Symbiant was a commercial success and sold better than we expected!
Long answer:
We expected at least moderate success, but the sales were better than expected! Since its release back in February, The Symbiant (apparently) sold more than many other "quality" BL/Gay games on Steam. For example, it outsold Gachi-Natsu, No, Thank you!!! and Beyond Eden. It miiight outsell Uncle Neighbor eventually as well. Doesn't count other game stores however, so most likely No, Thank You!!! still beats SMB if you count the sales from
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's website on top of Steam's.Thanks to those sales, we were able to pay for more CGs, more scenes, a couple more music tunes and overall more quality for the game's After Stories, which were originally supposed to be short DLCs and turned into
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.3 - I saw your game got pirated on the release day since it's on main game sale platforms, How do you feel it affected your sale?
Short answer:
it probably lost us a few sales that we won't get back, but it didn't stop The Symbiant from being a commercial success.
Long answer:
Denuvo's representatives said many times that they do not actually hope to stop piracy altogether, just protecting the game's release window. The first week following a game's release will alone represent 25% of the game's lifetime sales, so making it available for free during that time period is the most damaging, fiancially. As controversial as Denuvo and the game developer buying their services are, I believe Denuvo wouldn't be as widespread if it DID NOT actually prevent revenue loss from a game being pirated on day 1.
Relatedly, I've been studying piracy and its effects through surveys and some researches on my spare time for the past 2 years-ish, and I found recently that despite what hundreds of pirates will say, very few people actually pay for the games they pirated within 6 months of obtaining them, EVEN if they say they bought other titles during that same time period, implying they COULD have afforded that game.
As such, If I were to choose, I would rather our games to be pirate-less during its first 2 weeks, just so we can convince a few members of the "I can afford it but why pay when I can get it for free" crowd to cave in and buy it where they otherwise would never have. Past the 2 weeks, the game's hype will have mostly died down and opening the floodgate to piracy won't be as financially damaging.
4 - There's a saying that many porn games failed / studio closed because of Pirates, what's your take on it?
Short answer:
It's bullshit.
Long answer:
A game will only be pirated proportionally to its commercial success. So a game that nobody bothers pirating is a game that (almost) nobody bothered buying. If thousands of people pirated The Symbiant, that means thousands of people also chose to buy it, so I think this take is, almost every time, bullshit.
I could see a few cases where piracy COULD do damage though. Like an online game where there is little to no anti-piracy measure, where 90% of the players are pirates using the developer's bandwidth, meaning that them pirating the game actually costs them real and tangible money. I remember reading about a mobile game closing for that reason though I don't remember which one.
5a - Do you think "Word of Mouth" and "Good Will" is important for sales?
Short answer:
"Convenience" beats "Good Will" and Steam's recommendation algorithm provides 20x more exposure than "Word of Mouth", but Word of Mouth is necessary at first for Steam to bother recommending the game.
Long answer:
Do you remember the "path of least resistance" I mentioned earlier? As I got older, got a job and realized that my time and energies were more limited than when I was younger, I finally understood what "time is money" meant. If I want to buy my favorite cake, I'd be willing to pay $10 to the nearest store near my home rather than walk 1 hour to the next city to get the same cake for $2, because 1 hour of my time is more valuable than the $8 I would have potentially saved by walking.
When you have the money, $10 for instant access is less "resistance" than $2 + 1 hour of walking. Now replace the convenient $10 cake with Steam and the time-consuming $2 cake with Piracy. People aren't buying all their games on Steam instead of pirating them out of the goodness of their heart. They're buying because Steam is more convenient than piracy. Same applies to Netflix and Spotify. The warm feeling of knowing you helped a creator keep making stuff you like is just a nice bonus.
BUT the people who backed our Kickstarter and our Patreon, those who believed in us and spread the word are the reason we're getting recommended by Steam's algorithm now. Once we hit a certain wishlists treshold, Steam started recommending our game to tens of thousands of people and that's why the game succeeded financially. So I would say Word of Mouth and Good will is what gets you started, while Google and Steam's almighty algorithm are what ultimately keeps you sustained.
5b - Or only quality of the game matters?
Short answer:
Quality does matter, but beautiful graphics/presentation is what makes one play the game in the first place
Long answer:
"Came for the hot guys, stayed for the story". This is a very common sentiment I've seen in The Symbiant's reviews.
Our previous game Synthetic Lover had a more elaborate storyline and more character development than SMB, but SL's art wasn't nearly as appealing, so it sold less. On the other hand, I've seen some games with good graphics and a "meh" story sell much, much more than games with great writing, relationship building and character development. Beautiful graphics sell more than a beautiful story, it seems.
Little bonus:
Here's a fun fact about translation: SMB sold around 1.5 more copies in Thailand than in Japan. But thanks to regional pricing, one Japanese sales is worth 3 Thai sales. Japanese sales paid back the money we spent in the Japanese translation, while Thai sales sadly did not pay back financially, so for the After Stories, we're keeping Japanese and not Thai. The world is unfair like that.
Hope that answers your questions!
Last edited:
Does anyone know how I can get this game for free and the Android version?uncie neighbor Or similar games
- Dec 14, 2019
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I doesn't matter which android version I download, it just opens the browser on the game's steam page
- Dec 14, 2019
- 572
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Is the android version actually playable? It's just keeps redirecting me to the steam page over and over again.
Same, i tried downloading it from multiple sources but it always redirects me to the steam page of the game
- Dec 14, 2019
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I may look into this Android F95 after we're done with Re:Union and its releases. Right now this is not our priority, I'm afraid.
- Sep 24, 2018
- 1,183
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dude this game is a pure BL or gay game VN, that character art is just part of the lore in this game.
Hi, anyone experienced this issue?
Code:
I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.
While running game code:
File "game/extras.rpy", line 385, in execute
File "game/extras.rpy", line 385, in execute
File "game/extras.rpy", line 564, in execute
Exception: Could not find a ground image for imagemap.
-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------
Full traceback:
File "renpy/common/_layout/screen_main_menu.rpym", line 28, in script
python hide:
File "renpy/ast.py", line 1138, in execute
renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode(self.code.bytecode, self.hide, store=self.store)
File "renpy/python.py", line 1122, in py_exec_bytecode
exec(bytecode, globals, locals)
File "renpy/common/_layout/screen_main_menu.rpym", line 28, in <module>
python hide:
File "renpy/common/_layout/screen_main_menu.rpym", line 35, in _execute_python_hide
ui.interact()
File "renpy/ui.py", line 299, in interact
rv = renpy.game.interface.interact(roll_forward=roll_forward, **kwargs)
File "renpy/display/core.py", line 3499, in interact
repeat, rv = self.interact_core(preloads=preloads, trans_pause=trans_pause, pause=pause, pause_start=pause_start, pause_modal=pause_modal, **kwargs) # type: ignore
File "renpy/display/core.py", line 3969, in interact_core
root_widget.visit_all(lambda d : d.per_interact())
File "renpy/display/core.py", line 605, in visit_all
d.visit_all(callback, seen)
File "renpy/display/core.py", line 605, in visit_all
d.visit_all(callback, seen)
File "renpy/display/core.py", line 605, in visit_all
d.visit_all(callback, seen)
File "renpy/display/core.py", line 605, in visit_all
d.visit_all(callback, seen)
File "renpy/display/screen.py", line 476, in visit_all
callback(self)
File "renpy/display/core.py", line 3969, in <lambda>
root_widget.visit_all(lambda d : d.per_interact())
File "renpy/display/screen.py", line 487, in per_interact
self.update()
File "renpy/display/screen.py", line 680, in update
self.screen.function(**self.scope)
File "game/extras.rpy", line 385, in execute
File "game/extras.rpy", line 385, in execute
File "game/extras.rpy", line 564, in execute
File "renpy/ui.py", line 1250, in _imagemap
ground = pick(ground, ("ground", "idle"), idle)
File "renpy/ui.py", line 1248, in pick
raise Exception("Could not find a %s image for imagemap." % name[0])
Exception: Could not find a ground image for imagemap.
Windows-10-10.0.22621 AMD64
Ren'Py 7.6.0.23050611
The Symbiant X-1.1.6
Sat Feb 10 16:43:18 2024- Dec 14, 2019
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This will probably the last update to this thread from me. I'm not leaving the forum or anything --I'll probably ask for someone else to take over the thread since I have nothing more to add to it.
I updated the game along with the Android build. Hopefully that fixes the issues mentioned previously.
I updated the game along with the Android build. Hopefully that fixes the issues mentioned previously.
- Sep 24, 2018
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- Feb 23, 2023
- 8,462
- 4,567
TheSymbiant-1.1.7
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